Reconstructing an Identity: A Psychoanalytical Reading of TheNight of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams

摘要

This paper attempts to detect Tennessee Williams's psychological development in his last successful playTheNight of the Iguana (1961) in comparison with his previous plays which pronounced his fragmented identity. A comparison between Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer (1958) and TheNight of the Iguana detects a sudden shift of the dramatist's mind in the application of symbols and images employed. A psychoanalytical assessment and comparison of symbols, images and literary devices applied in both plays will depict the dramatist's constitution of his tenuous "I" and reconstruction of his distorted identity. Unlike the horrifying images of God, cannibalism and melancholia resulting from abjection that imposed a certain Gothic atmosphere in Suddenly Last Summer, the images and settings in The Night of the Iguana resonate with comfort and leisure which resemble the pre-symbolic. The study therefore suggests that Williams's abundant use of natural symbols and images, particularly the God image in The Night of the Iguana presents the setting as the "chora" which Kristeva defines as the place where the infant's identity is mergedwith his/her mother before gaining an identity after the mirror stage and the learning of language whichmarks subsequent entry into the symbolic order. This analysis therefore helps to bring some clarity to the play, particularly in the light of prior criticism levelled against Williams for his excessive use of symbols and natural images.